Great story Neil and a very spooky one at that.
I have my own strange story to tell...
About 5 months ago I was detecting down a local woods near to me and amongst other nice items, a lovely livery button.
After much research I found it belonged to the Phillips family of Pembrokeshire.
While doing my research I came across an American website from a Phillips family who had decedents from Pembrokeshire. Direct decedents of the family of which the livery button belonged. I should point out I'm from Pembrokeshire too.
With this I was very pleased, but the story don't end there....
All along the name Phillips was ringing alarm bells in my head as my Grandmothers name is Phillips, so I did some further digging. Luckily about three years ago I researched my family tree and had traced the Phillips line back to about 1790.
So with this information I contacted the American family and we compared our family trees.
It turns out that I am a direct relative to the American family and a direct decedent of the Phillips family that used the livery button.
So as you can imagine I was delighted with my result